Porteño (feminine: porteña) in Spanish is used to refer to a person who is from or lives in a port city, but it can also be used as an adjective for anything related to those port cities. It is usually applied to the port city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and since the end of the 19th century Porteños has come to be the name of the people from that city.

As a result of great immigration waves from Europe peaking in the 1880s, the Río de la Plata area, and in particular Buenos Aires, is mostly populated with people of European descent, mainly Italian and Spanish. In contrast, inland Argentina, especially the Northwest, has had less European immigration and retains more white criollos, mestizos and indians. For that reason, the inhabitants of Buenos Aires tend to consider themselves as different from the people of inland Argentina and more akin to the inhabitants of Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay, which has a similar history of European immigration.

References

Category:Buenos Aires Category:Spanish language

Name	Ástor Piazzolla
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla
Born	March 11, 1921 Mar del Plata, Argentina
Died	July 04, 1992 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Genre	Nuevo tango
Occupation	Composer, Bandoneón player

Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla (March 11, 1921 – July 4, 1992) was an Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music. A virtuoso bandoneónist, he regularly performed his own compositions with different ensembles.

Biography

Piazzolla was born in Mar del Plata, Argentina in 1921 to Italian parents, Vicente Nonino Piazzolla and Asunta Manetti. His grandfather, a sailor and fisherman named Pantaleone Piazzolla, had immigrated to Mar del Plata from Trani, a seaport town in the southeastern Italian region of Apulia, at the end of the 19th century. Ástor Piazzolla spent most of his childhood with his family in New York City, where he was exposed to both jazz and the music of J. S. Bach at an early age. While there, he acquired fluency in four languages: Spanish, English, French, and Italian. He began to play the bandoneon after his father, nostalgic for his homeland, spotted one in a New York pawn shop. At the age of 13, he met Carlos Gardel, another great figure of tango, who invited the young prodigy to join him on his current tour. Much to his dismay, Piazzolla's father deemed that he was not old enough to go along. While he did play a young paper boy in Gardel’s movie El día que me quieras , this early disappointment of being kept from the tour proved to be a blessing in disguise, as it was on this tour that Gardel and his entire band perished in a plane crash. In later years, Piazzolla made light of this near miss, joking that had his father not been so careful, he wouldn't be playing the bandoneon—he'd be playing the harp.

He returned to Argentina in 1937, where strictly traditional tango still reigned, and played in night clubs with a series of groups including the orchestra of Anibal Troilo, then considered the top bandoneon player and bandleader in Buenos Aires. The pianist Arthur Rubinstein—then living in Buenos Aires—advised him to study with the Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera. Delving into scores of Stravinsky, Bartók, Ravel, and others, he rose early each morning to hear the Teatro Colón orchestra rehearse while continuing a gruelling performing schedule in the tango clubs at night. In 1950 he composed the soundtrack to the film Bólidos de acero.

At Ginastera's urging, in 1953 Piazzolla entered his Buenos Aires Symphony in a composition contest, and won a grant from the French government to study in Paris with the legendary French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. In 1954 he and his first wife, the artist Dedé Wolff, left Buenos Aires and their two children (Diana aged 11 and Daniel aged 10) behind and travelled to Paris. The insightful Boulanger turned Piazzolla's life around in a day, as he related in his own words:

Piazzolla returned from New York to Argentina in 1955, formed the Octeto Buenos Aires with Enrico Mario Francini and Hugo Baralis on violins, Atilio Stampone on piano, Leopoldo Federico as second bandoneon, Horacio Malvicino on electric guitar, José Bragato on cello and Juan Vasallo on double bass to play tangos, and never looked back.

Upon introducing his new approach to the tango (nuevo tango), he became a controversial figure among Argentines both musically and politically. The Argentine saying "in Argentina everything may change — except the tango" suggests some of the resistance he found in his native land. However, his music gained acceptance in Europe and North America, and his reworking of the tango was embraced by some liberal segments of Argentine society, who were pushing for political changes in parallel to his musical revolution.

During the period of Argentine military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, Piazzolla lived in Italy, but returned many times to Argentina, recorded there, and on at least one occasion had lunch with the dictator Jorge Rafael Videla. However, his relationship with the dictator might have been less than friendly, as recounted in Ástor Piazzolla, A manera de memorias (a comprehensive collection of interviews, constituting a memoir):

In 1990 he suffered thrombosis in Paris, and died two years later in Buenos Aires.

Among his followers, his own protégé Marcelo Nisinman is the best known innovator of the tango music of the new millennium, while Pablo Ziegler, pianist with Piazzolla's second quintet, has assumed the role of principal custodian of nuevo tango, extending the jazz influence in the style. The Brazilian guitarist Sergio Assad has also experimented with folk-derived, complex virtuoso compositions that show Piazzolla's structural influence while steering clear of tango sounds; and Osvaldo Golijov has acknowledged Piazzolla as perhaps the greatest influence on his globally oriented, eclectic compositions for classical and klezmer performers.

Musical style

around 1970.]] Piazzolla's nuevo tango was distinct from the traditional tango in its incorporation of elements of jazz, its use of extended harmonies and dissonance, its use of counterpoint, and its ventures into extended compositional forms. As Argentine psychoanalyst Carlos Kuri has pointed out, Piazzolla's fusion of tango with this wide range of other recognizable Western musical elements was so successful that it produced a new individual style transcending these influences. It is precisely this success, and individuality, that makes it hard to pin down where particular influences reside in his compositions, but some aspects are clear. The use of the passacaglia technique of a circulating bass line and harmonic sequence, invented and much used in 17th and 18th century baroque music but also central to the idea of jazz "changes", predominates in most of Piazzolla's mature compositions. Another clear reference to the baroque is the often complex and virtuosic counterpoint that sometimes follows strict fugal behavior but more often simply allows each performer in the group to assert his voice. A further technique that emphasises this sense of democracy and freedom among the musicians is improvisation that is borrowed from jazz in concept, but in practice involves a different vocabulary of scales and rhythms that stay within the parameters of the established tango sound-world. Pablo Ziegler has been particularly responsible for developing this aspect of the style both within Piazzolla's groups and since the composer's death.

With the composition of Adiós Nonino in 1959, Piazzolla established a standard structural pattern for his compositions, involving a formal pattern of fast-slow-fast-slow-coda, with the fast sections emphasizing gritty tango rhythms and harsh, angular melodic figures, and the slower sections usually making use of the string instrument in the group and/or Piazzolla's own bandoneón as lyrical soloists. The piano tends to be used throughout as a percussive rhythmic backbone, while the electric guitar either joins in this role or spins filigree improvisations; the double bass parts are usually of little interest, but provide an indispensable rugged thickness to the sound of the ensemble. The quintet of bandoneon, violin, piano, electric guitar and double bass was Piazzolla's preferred setup on two extended occasions during his career, and most critics consider it to be the most successful instrumentation for his works. This is due partly to its great efficiency in terms of sound - it covers or imitates most sections of a symphony orchestra, including the percussion which is improvised by all players on the bodies of their instruments - and the strong expressive identity it permits each individual musician. With a style that is both rugged and intricate, such a setup augments the compositions' inherent characteristics.

Despite the prevalence of the quintet formation and the ABABC compositional structure, Piazzolla consistently experimented with other musical forms and instrumental combinations. In 1965 an album was released containing collaborations between Piazzolla and Jorge Luis Borges where Borges's poetry was narrated over very avant-garde music by Piazzolla including the use of dodecaphonic (twelve-tone) rows, free non-melodic improvisation on all instruments, and modal harmonies and scales. In 1968 Piazzolla wrote and produced an "operita", María de Buenos Aires, that employed a larger ensemble including flute, percussion, multiple strings and three vocalists, and juxtaposed movements in Piazzolla's own style with several pastiche numbers ranging from waltz and hurdy-gurdy to a piano/narrator bar-room scena straight out of Casablanca.

By the 1970s Piazzolla was living in Rome, managed by the Italian agent Aldo Pagani, and exploring a leaner, more fluid musical style drawing on more jazz influence, and with simpler, more continuous forms. Pieces that exemplify this new direction include Libertango and most of the Suite Troileana, written in memory of the late Anibal Troilo. In the 1980s Piazzolla was rich enough, for the first time, to become relatively autonomous artistically, and wrote some of his most ambitious multi-movement works. These included Tango Suite for the virtuoso guitar duo Sergio and Odair Assad; Histoire du Tango, where a flutist and guitarist tell the history of tango in four chunks of music styled at thirty-year intervals; and La Camorra, a suite in three ten minute movements, inspired by the Neapolitan crime family and exploring symphonic concepts of large-scale form, thematic development, contrasts of texture and massive accumulations of ensemble sound. After making three albums in New York with the second quintet and producer Kip Hanrahan, two of which he described on separate occasions as "the greatest thing I've done", he disbanded the quintet, formed a sextet with an extra bandoneon, cello, bass, electric guitar, and piano, and wrote music for this ensemble that was even more adventurous harmonically and structurally than any of his previous works (Preludio y Fuga; Sex-tet). Had he not suffered an incapacitating stroke on the way to Notre Dame mass in 1990, it is likely that he would have continued to use his popularity as a performer of his own works to experiment in relative safety with even more audacious musical techniques, while possibly responding to the surging popularity of non-Western musics by finding ways to incorporate new styles into his own. In his musical professionalism and open-minded attitude to existing styles he held the mindset of an 18th century composing performer such as Handel or Mozart, who were anxious to assimilate all national "flavors" of their day into their own compositions, and who always wrote with both first-hand performing experience and a sense of direct social relationship with their audiences. This may have resulted in a backlash amongst conservative tango aficionados in Argentina, but in the rest of the West it was the key to his extremely sympathetic reception among classical and jazz musicians, both seeing some of the best aspects of their musical practices reflected in his work.

Musical career

Piazzolla, after leaving Troilo's orchestra in the 1940s, led numerous ensembles beginning with the 1946 Orchestra, the 1955 Octeto Buenos Aires, the 1960 "First Quintet", the 1971 Conjunto 9 ("Noneto"), the 1978 "Second Quintet" and the 1989 New Tango Sextet. As well as providing original compositions and arrangements, he was the director and Bandoneon player in all of them. He also recorded the album Summit with jazz baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan. His numerous compositions include orchestral work such as the "Concierto para bandoneón, orquesta, cuerdas y percusión", "Doble concierto para bandoneón y guitarra", "Tres tangos sinfónicos" and "Concierto de Nácar para 9 tanguistas y orquesta", pieces for the solo classical guitar—the Cinco Piezas (1980), as well as song-form compositions that still today are well known by the general public in his country, like "Balada para un loco" (Ballad for a madman) and Adiós Nonino (dedicated to his father) which he recorded many times with different musicians and ensembles. Biographers estimate that Piazzolla wrote around 3,000 pieces and recorded around 500.

In the summer of 1985 he appeared with his Quinteto Tango Nuevo at the Almeida Theatre in London for a week-long engagement. On September 6, 1987, his quintet gave a concert in New York's Central Park, which was recorded and, in 1994, released in compact disk format as The Central Park Concert.

Discography

Two Argentinians in Paris (with Lalo Schifrin, 1955)

Sinfonía de Tango (Orquesta de Cuerdas, 1955)

Adiós Nonino (1960)

Piazzolla Interpreta A Piazzolla (Quinteto, 1961)

Piazzolla … O No? (canta Nelly Vazquez, Quinteto, 1961)

Nuestro Tiempo (canta Hector de Rosas, Quinteto, 1962)

Tango Contemporáneo (Nuevo Octeto, 1963)

Tango Para Una Cuidad (canta Héctor De Rosas, Quinteto, 1963)

Concierto en el Philharmonic Hall de New York (Quinteto, 1965)

El Tango. Jorge Luis Borges - Ástor Piazzolla (Orquesta and Quinteto, 1965)

La Guardia Vieja (1966)

La Historia del Tango. La Guardia Vieja (Orquesta, 1967)

La Historia del Tango. Época Romántica (Orquesta, 1967)

ION Studios (1968)

María de Buenos Aires (Orquesta, 1968)

Piazzolla En El Regina (Quinteto, 1970)

Original Tangos from Argentina Vol. 1 & 2 (solo bandeneon, 1970)

Pulsación (Orquesta, 1970)

Piazzolla-Troilo (Dúo de Bandoneones, 1970)

Concerto Para Quinteto (Quinteto, 1971)

La Bicicleta Blanca, (Amelita Baltar y Orquesta, 1971)

En Persona (recita Horacio Ferrer, Ástor Piazzolla, 1971)

Música Popular Contemporánea de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Vol.1 & 2 (Conjunto 9, 1972)

Roma (Conjunto 9, 1972)

Libertango (Orquesta, 1974)

Piazzolla and Amelita Baltar (1974)

Summit (Reunión Cumbre) with Gerry Mulligan (Orquesta, 1974)

Suite Troileana-Lumiere (Orquesta, 1975)

Buenos Aires (1976)

Il Pleut Sur Santiago (Orquesta, 1976)

Piazzolla & El Conjunto Electrónico (Conjunto Electrónico, 1976)

Piazzolla en el Olimpia de Paris (Conjunto Electrónico, 1977)

Lo Que Vendrá (Orquesta de Cuerdas and Quinteto Nuevo Tiempo, 1979)

Piazzolla-Goyeneche En Vivo, Teatro Regina (Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1982)

Oblivion (Orquesta, 1982)

Suite Punta Del Este (Quinteto, 1982)

Live in Lugano (Quinteto, 1983)

SWF Rundfunkorchester (1983)

Concierto de Nácar - Piazzolla en el Teatro Colón (Conjunto 9 y Orquesta Filarmónica del Teatro Colón, 1983)

Live in Colonia (Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1984)

Montreal Jazz Festival (Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1984)

Live in Wien Vol.1 (Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1984)

Enrico IV (sound track of film Enrico IV (film)Enrico IV, 1984)

Green Studio (1984)

Teatro Nazionale di Milano (1984)

El Nuevo Tango. Piazzolla y Gary Burton (Quinteto, 1986)

El Exilio de Gardel (soundtrack of film El Exilio de Gardel, Quinteto, 1986)

(Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1986)

Central Park Concert (Quinteto, 1987)

Concierto para Bandoneón - Tres Tangos with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Lalo Schifrin (conductor), Princeton University (1987)

Sur (soundtrack of film Sur, Quinteto, 1988)

Luna. Live in Amsterdam (Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1989)

Lausanne Concert (Sexteto, 1989)

Live at the BBC (1989)

La Camorra (Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1989)

Hommage a Liege: Concierto para bandoneón y guitarra/Historia del Tango (1988) with Liège Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leo Brouwer. The concerto was performed by Piazzolla with Cacho Tirao, the Historia by Guy Lukowski and Marc Grawels.

Bandoneón Sinfónico (1990)

The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night (Tango apasionado) (1991)

Five Tango Sensations (Ástor Piazzolla and Kronos Quartet, 1991)

Original Tangos from Argentina (1992)

Lausanne Concert(Sexteto, 1993)

Central Park Concert 1987 (Quinteto, 1994)

57 Minutos con la Realidad (Sexteto, 1996)

Tres Minutos con la Realidad (Sexteto, 1997)

See also

María de Buenos Aires, a tango opera by Piazzolla

Estaciones Porteñas, Piazzolla’s 4 Seasons

12 Monkeys, a movie whose soundtrack is derived and excerpted from Piazzolla's Suite Punta del Este

Ave Maria

References

External links

[ Ástor Piazzolla] in Allmusic

Piazzolla discography

Piazzolla.Org founded by John Buckman

Todo tango:Piazzolla Piazzolla Revolucionario Querido Ástor Piazzollazzo.com.ar E-Astoria.be (Ensemble Astoria). Astorpia.com (Astorpia Tango Quintet).

Piazzolla Sheet Music For Accordion

Ástor Piazzolla biography and discography at World Music Central

see also "Tangata" - the music of Astor Piazzolla...the Manny Bobenrieth Ensemble, R&L; Records ;Video recordings

Fuga Y Misterio Played by Classical Jam

Fracanapa Played by Classical Jam

Maria de Buenos Aires Played by Astorpia Tango Quintet.

Libertango Played by Ástor Piazzolla and Yo-Yo Ma.

Oblivion Played by Cellistanbul and Julian Lloyd Webber

Performance of Oblivion

Category:1921 births Category:1992 deaths Category:Argentine musicians Category:Argentine people of Italian descent Category:Argentine songwriters Category:Argentine bandoneonists Category:Bandoneonists Category:Argentine classical bandoneonists Category:Argentine composers Category:Argentine film score composers Category:People from Mar del Plata Category:20th-century classical composers Category:Tango musicians

Name	Gidon Kremer
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Born	February 27, 1947 Riga, Latvia
Genre	Classical
Notable instruments	ViolinNicolo Amati 1641Guarneri del Gesù 1730Baron Feilitsch Stradivarius 1734

Gidon Kremer () (born February 27, 1947) is a Latvian violinist and conductor. In 1980 he left the USSR and settled in Germany.

Biography

Kremer was born in Riga to parents of German-Jewish (his father being a Holocaust survivor) and Latvian-Swedish origins. He began playing the violin at the age of four, receiving instruction from his father and his grandfather, who were both professional violinists. He went on to study at the Riga School of Music and with David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1967, he won third prize at the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels; then, in 1969, second prize at the Montreal International Violin Competition (shared with Oleh Krysa) followed by first prize at the Paganini Competition in Genoa; and finally first prize again in 1970 at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Kremer's first concert in the West was in Germany in 1975, followed by appearances at the Salzburg Festival in 1976 and in New York City in 1977. In 1981, Kremer founded a chamber music festival in Lockenhaus, Austria, with a focus on new and unconventional programming; since 1992 the festival has been known as "Kremerata Musica" and in 1996 Kremer founded the Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra, composed of young players from the Baltic region. He was also among the artistic directors of the festival "Art Projekt 92" in Munich and is director of the Musiksommer Gstaad festival in Switzerland. In 2008, he and Kremerata Baltica toured with the classical musical comedy duo Igudesman & Joo.

Kremer is known for his wide-ranging repertoire, extending from Antonio Vivaldi and J.S. Bach to contemporary composers. He has championed the work of composers such as Ástor Piazzolla, George Enescu, Alban Berg, Philip Glass, Alfred Schnittke, Leonid Desyatnikov, Alexander Raskatov, Alexander Voustin, Lera Auerbach, Pēteris Vasks, Arvo Pärt, Roberto Carnevale and John Adams. Among the many composers who have dedicated works to him are Sofia Gubaidulina (Offertorium) and Luigi Nono (La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura). His partners in performance include Valery Afanassiev, Martha Argerich, Oleg Maisenberg, Mischa Maisky, Yuri Bashmet and Vadim Sakharov. He has a large discography on the Deutsche Grammophon label, for which he has recorded since 1978; he has also recorded for Philips Records, as well as Decca Records, ECM and Nonesuch Records.

Kremer played the role of Paganini in Peter Schamoni's 1983 movie, Frühlingssinfonie [Spring Symphony].

Kremer has numbered in his collection of antique violins a Guarneri del Gesù violin made in 1730; and the Antonio Stradivari violin of 1734 often referred to by its sobriquet, Baron Feititsch-Heermann. His current violin is a Nicolo Amati violin dating from 1641.

Honours and awards

Queen Elisabeth Music Competition (third prize) (1967; Brussels)

Paganini Competition (first prize) (1969; Genoa)

International Tchaikovsky Competition (first prize) (1970; Moscow)

Léonie Sonning Music Prize (1989; Denmark)

Latvian Great Music Award (1995, 2004; Latvia)

Lithuanian Great Duke Gediminas Medal (2000; Lithuania)

Rolf Schock Prize (2008; Sweden)

References

External links

Kremerata Baltica official website

Igudesman and Joo

Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Latvian classical violinists Category:Latvian conductors (music) Category:People from Riga Category:Prize-winners of the International Tchaikovsky Competition Category:Moscow Conservatory alumni Category:Prize-winners of the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Category:Paganini Competition prize-winners Category:Rolf Schock Prize laureates

Name	Ryōta Komatsu小松亮太
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Born	Tokyo, Japan
Instrument	Bandoneón
Genre	Tango
Label	Sony Music Japan
Url	RyotaKomatsu.com

(born October 30, 1973) is a Japanese bandoneón player. He has cooperated with famous Japanese violinist Taro Hakase in his own album La Trampera (2001), and with Bajofondo in their album Mar Dulce.

External links

Official website Ryōta Komatsu on Sony Music Online

Category:Japanese musicians Category:Tango musicians Category:Sony Music Japan artists Category:1973 births Category:Living people

Ara Malikian (born 1968) is a violinist of Armenian descent.

Biography

Ara Malikian began studying the violin at an early age with his father. He gave his first concert at the age of 12 and when he was 14 he was invited to study in Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover in Berlin. At 15 he was the youngest student to be admitted in this school. Later he continued his studies in the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, at the same time receiving lessons from professors Franco Gulli, Ruggiero Ricci, Ivry Gitlis, Herman Krebbers and members of the Alban Berg Quartet.

He has assimilated the music of other cultures like those of the Middle East (Arab and Jewish), Central Europe (gipsy and Klezmer), Argentina (tango) and Spain (flamenco).

With a wide-ranging repertoire, that includes the majority of all the important pieces written for the violin (concerts with orchestra, sonatas and pieces with piano and chamber music) he has also premiered pieces from modern composers like Franco Danatoni, Malcolm Lipkin, Luciano Chailly, Ladislav Kupkovich, Loris Tjeknavorian, Lawrence Roman and Yervand Yernakian. Malikian also plays recitals for solo violin with programs featuring complete cycles of the "24 Caprices" of Paganini, the "6 Sonatas" of Eugène Ysaÿe and the "Sonatas and Partitas" of J.S. Bach.

He has been recognized in numerous competitions, among which are the First Prizes obtained in the International Competitions "Felix Mendelssohn" (1987, Berlin, Germany) and "Pablo Sarasate" (1995, Pamplona, Spain) besides other prizes like those from the competitions "Niccolo Paganini" (Genoa, Italy), "Zino Francescatti" (Marseille, France), "Rodolfo Lipizer" (Gorizia, Italy), "Jeunesses Musicales" (Belgrade, Yugoslavia), "Rameau" (Le Mans, Francia), "International Artists Guild" (New York, USA), and the "International Music Competition of Japan". In 1993 he received the "Prize for Artistic Devotion and Achievement" from the German Ministry of Culture.

He has played in more than 40 countries: New York (Carnegie Hall), Paris (Salle Pleyel), Viene (Musikverein), Toronto (Ford Center), Madrid (Auditorio Nacional and Teatro Real), Venice, Los Angeles, Taipei, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Cuba, Barcelona and Bilbao among others. He has also participated in the festivals at Aspen, Colamar, Prades, Schleswig Holstein, Braunschweig, San Sebastian, Segovia, Bergen, Freden, Metlach and Prague.

As a soloist he has been invited by the following orchestras: Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Zürich Chamber Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, Genova Opera Orchestra, Sinfónica de Madrid, Sinfónica de Portugal, Chamber Orchestra of Tübingen, Moscu Virtuosi, Belgrade Philharmonic, Toulouse Chamber Orchestra, Armenia Philharmonic and Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid, under the direction of such important directors as Mariss Jansons, Peter Maag, Jesús López-Cobos, Vladimir Spivakov, Miguel Ángel Gómez-Martínez, Luis Antonio García Navarro, Vassili Sinaisky, Edmond de Stoutz, Gudni Emilson, Juan José Mena and Jo Ann Falletta.

He lives in Madrid, where he was the concertmaster of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid (resident orchestra of the Madrid Royal Opera). In Le Boeuf sur le Toit by D. Milhaud, in the version for violin and orchestra, under the direction of Gómez Martínez; and in the "Concerto for Violín and Orchestra in D minor" by Aram Khachaturian under the baton of Jesús López-Cobos.

He plays in duo since 1995 with the pianist Serouj Kradjian, also of Armenian origin, with whom he recorded the complete cycle of Sonatas by Robert Schumann (Hänsler) and the record "Miniatures" (Malkrafon), an exquisite anthology of music for violin and piano written by Armenian composers. He has also recorded numerous discs for record companies such as BMG, Auvidis, Trittico Classics and Elite Music, including among many other compositions, "The Four Seasons" of Vivaldi (more than 80,000 copies sold for UNICEF).

He also maintains a close collaboration with José Luis Montón. He has also worked with the Lebanese singer Fairuz, the flamenco dancers Joaquín Cortés and Belén Maya, the Ensamble Nuevo Tango and the jazz pianist Horacio Icasto. He has also worked with film-music composers like Alberto Iglesias, with whom he recorded the soundtrack for Hable Con Ella, the last movie by Almodóvar, or Pascal Gainge in Otro Barrio by the director Salvador García Ruiz.

Ara Malikian has released albums "Manantial" and "De la felicidad" accompanied by the flamenco guitarist José Luis Montón. This last CD has been nominated by the Spanish Academy of Music for the best New Music CD of the year. With Warner Malikian has also recorded a double CD with some of the most significant works of Paganini, including his "24 Caprices for Violin Solo", an album with some compositions by Sarasate accompanied by the Armenian pianist Serouj Kradjian, the "Six Sonatas" for violin by Ysaÿe and the "Sonatas and Partitas" by J. S. Bach.

Ara Malikian has been nominated twice for the best classical performance in the 2007 Music Prizes in Spain given by the Spanish Academy for his recording of the Poema Concertante by Xavier Montsalvatge, along with the Castilla y León Symphonic Orchestra; as well as for a piece with Joan Valent, Suso Sáiz and Marc Blanes.

References

Ara Malikian Discography

"Lejos" (2007)

"Meeting with a friend" (2007)

"Tears of Beauty" (2006)

"De los Cobos / Montsalvatge" (2005)

"De la Felicidad" (2005)

"The Four Seasons by Vivaldi" (2004)

"Manantial" (2002/2004)

"Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin by Bach" (2003)

"Six Sonatas for Solo Violin by Ysaÿe" (2003)

"Sarasate" (2003)

"24 Caprices for Solo Violin by Paganini" (2003)

"Robert Schumann" (2000)

"All Seasons for Different" (2000)

"500 Motivaciones" (1999)

"Bow on the String" (1997)

"Miniatures" (1996)

"750 Jahre Wölpinghausen" (1996)

"Le quatro stagioni" (1995)

As guest artist:

"Insula Poética" En Son Brull (2006)

Soundtracks:

"La Mala Educación" (2005) - Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

"Hable con ella" (2002) - Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

"Los Pasos Perdidos" (2001) - Directed by Manane Rodriguez

"El Otro Barrio" (2000) - Directed by Salvador García Ruiz

"Manolito Gafotas" (1999) - Directed by Miguel Albaladejo

External links

IEMEVE artist management: more information and sound sample

Personal website

Category:1968 births Category:Living people Category:Armenian violinists Category:Paganini Competition prize-winners Category:Alumni of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama